BlackBerry Q10 release date and price revealed on pre-order

Ahead of its late-April release date, the BlackBerry Q10 is now available for pre-order at a host of UK retailers

The BlackBerry Q10 is now up for preorder from a variety of UK retailers ahead of its scheduled late-April release date. The Q10 will apparently cost around £530 SIM-free, making it pricier than Sony’s Xperia Z handset.

Unlocked Mobiles suggest the BlackBerry Q10 could land in the UK on the April 26 – the same day Samsung’s Galaxy S4 goes on sale.

‘Stock expected 26th April. Customers advised to Pre Order early to guarantee a handset from batch 1,’ said the Unlocked Mobiles on its Q10 page.

Know Your Mobile spoke with Expansys about the Q10’s UK release date, which the retailer confirmed was happening at the ‘end of April.’ Expansys would not comment on the April 26 rumours.

Launched alongside the BlackBerry Z10 in January, the BlackBerry Q10 is the first BlackBerry 10-powered device to feature a QWERTY keyboard. The handset also features a 3.1-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display with a HD content appealing 720x720p resolution.

Powering the device along is a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 chipset and 2GB of RAM. The Q10 will ship with 16GB of internal storage and a microSD slot where you can slot an additional 64GB.

Other notable specs aboard the Q10 include: 8-megapixel camera, 2100mAh battery, and NFC. You also get all the benefits of BlackBerry’s new BB10 operating system, although we’re not too sure how well it’ll translate onto the Q10’s smaller display.

On a positive note, BlackBerry recently confirmed there are now over 100,000 applications available for its BlackBerry 10 platform.

Check out our BlackBerry Z10 review to see what we made of BlackBerry's vision for how smartphones should function.

BlackBerry has yet to comment officially on how much the Q10 will cost and when it will launch in the UK.